Vanished Kingdoms: The Rise and Fall of States and Nations (110 page)

Yet from 1997 onwards the Montenegrin Communist Party, which had stayed in charge throughout the wars, split into pro- and anti-Milošević factions, and the stronger anti faction gradually distanced itself from Belgrade. In its brief, last emanation, the Yugoslav Federation took a dual form, within which Serbia and Montenegro were assigned an equal voice in foreign and defence policy, adopting the sort of arrangement which King Nikola and his ministers might once have accepted.

Montenegro’s disaffection with Serbia grew markedly in 1999 during ‘Operation Noble Anvil’, NATO’s bombing campaign launched to protect neighbouring Kosovo, then a province of Serbia (with a largely Albanian population) which, as we saw at the outset, declared its independence in 2008. Kosovan refugees poured over the frontier; NATO planners targeted Montenegrin ports and communications; and collateral casualties were caused when bombs fell on peaceful villages. Montenegro was paying heavily for a Serbian connection of rapidly decreasing benefit.

Once Slobodan Milošević had been overthrown in Serbia in October 2000, the Montenegrin leadership talked openly of its aspirations for an agreed divorce. Preparations took time, but on 22 May 2006, after nearly ninety years’ delay, the crucial referendum was held. The motion for independence narrowly gained the required majority of votes, despite EU monitors having raised the threshold from 50 to 55 per cent; the winning margin of 0.5 per cent was more respectable than it seemed.
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Montenegro joined the United Nations and the Council of Europe. The sovereign state which had vanished in 1918 was restored.
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In the period preceding the referendum, the government of Prime Minister Djukanović systematically promoted all the symbols of Montenegro’s separate identity. In addition to supporting the Montenegrin Orthodox Church, it renamed the country’s official language. The school curriculum replaced Serbian language classes with ‘native language classes’, and the University’s Department of Serbian Language and Literature became the ‘Department of Serbian, Montenegrin, Bosnian and Croat Studies’.
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In 2004 a new state anthem was introduced in reaction to Serbia’s reintroduction of the old royal anthem of the House of Karadjeordjević. Since then Montenegrins sing ‘
Oj svijetla majska zoro
’, ‘Oh, bright dawn of May’, which recalls the conquest of Kosovo.
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Finally, on 12 December 2005 the prime minister unveiled a long-awaited statue in a spacious park of Podgorica. ‘Montenegro’, Djukanović said, ‘was, is and should be a friend of all nations, especially of the South Slavs. But never again [will she become] someone’s friend to her own detriment.’
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An opposition spokesman dismissed the event as ‘a dictator’s act of personal promotion’. Yet it was welcomed by Prince Nikola II Petrović (b. 1941), an architect resident in Paris and son of the late Prince Mihailo.
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The statue showed King Nikola mounted, but wearing the same national dress as he had worn on Proclamation Day in 1910.

III

The theory and practice of state sovereignty is a complex subject. Few would deny that the destruction of a recognized state through foreign interference is illegal. One may draw a parallel with the death of individuals. If a man or a woman dies from age or sickness, the event may be regretted, but it cannot be morally denounced. Yet if the loss of life is due to the action or inaction of others, it is automatically classed as a crime – manslaughter or murder or involuntary homicide.

With respect to sovereign states, the wider context is crucial. Few politicians or international lawyers would oppose the idea that a supranational order exists, and that the conduct of sovereign states is subject to collective rules and sanctions. Such, after all, are the foundations of international law. The failure in Montenegro’s case, therefore, was not confined to the fact of the state’s demise through foreign fraud and violence: it was equally a failure of what would now be called the ‘international community’. Montenegro had been a member of the wartime entente, and her legal personality was still intact as the war ended. Whether or not it was formally terminated by the decisions of the Paris Peace Conference is open to debate. For reasons that are hard to pinpoint, Montenegro’s fate completely escaped the international agenda.

King Nikola’s kingdom sank before the legal framework of state sovereignty was strengthened by the Estrada Doctrine of 1930 and the Montevideo Convention of 1933, which expounded the principles of sovereign equality and of non-intervention. It certainly met Montevideo’s four criteria of sovereignty: namely, a permanent population, a defined territory, a recognized government, and the capacity to conduct foreign relations.
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But in 1918–21, when the Allied Powers and then the League of Nations had to deal with numerous cases of disputed sovereignty, none of these principles had been formally established. The Åland Isles, for example, objected to automatic incorporation into Finland, which had recently declared its independence. The Ålanders were 90 per cent Swedish-speaking, and claimed the right to remain in Sweden. The Swedish government sponsored their claim, and the League of Nations convened its very first commission of inquiry. In 1921, to the surprise of many, the commission’s recommendation was to leave the islands under Finnish jurisdiction, but with a firm guarantee of their autonomy. This judgment has held good ever since.
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In Albania, another dispute was not settled so peaceably. The Serbian army launched a further advance in an attempt to pre-empt the outcome, but its offensive helped the Allied Powers to resolve their differences in precisely the opposite way to the Serbs’ intentions. In November 1921, by a decree of the Allied Conference of Ambassadors, Albanian independence was recognized and, with minor changes, the frontiers of 1913 were reconfirmed.
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The question arises, therefore, why Montenegro could not have benefited from similar arbitration. Both the Peace Conference and the League of Nations were aware of the problem, yet failed to act. The League’s excuse may well have been a technical one: once incorporated into Serbia, the Montenegrins became a minority, and the League had a rule that claims by minorities had to be sponsored by the claimants’ ‘mother country’. Sweden sponsored the Ålanders, but Serbia was obviously not going to sponsor a Montenegrin complaint against Serbia.

One can only think that the Supreme Council at the Peace Conference was gripped by the fatal ‘friendly ally syndrome’. Montenegro was shunned for the same reason that the Irish Republic or Corsica was shunned. Allied leaders were quick to champion the victims of the defeated enemy, but they had neither the will nor the courage to investigate injustices caused by their own major partners. At one point, for example, President Wilson agreed to meet a Corsican delegation, not realizing that Corsica formed part of metropolitan France. When reprimanded by Clemenceau, he cancelled the appointment, telling his secretary: ‘I cannot interfere with the internal affairs of a friendly ally.’ Lloyd George pounced. ‘I hope your Excellency will apply the same rule to Ireland,’ he said, ‘which I need not remind you is still a part of Great Britain… After all, are we not your ally?’ ‘Associate,’ the President responded sourly, ‘not ally.’
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Assessments of Montenegro’s unification with Serbia have varied greatly over the decades. Inter-war Serbian scholars regarded it as an entirely natural event. Yugoslav scholars of the Tito era, strongly influenced by Communist ideology, showed no sympathy for a dead monarchy. Now that an independent Montenegro has re-emerged, however, a new historical consensus appears to be emerging with it. A textbook published in Podgorica in 2006 and a scholarly monograph both present interpretations that coincide in large measure with the once lonely voice of the author of
Martyred Nation
.
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One is tempted to enquire whether any other European states have been treated as shabbily as Montenegro was, especially by an ally or by self-styled benefactors. Austria’s
Anschluss
with Germany in 1938, as engineered by Adolf Hitler, is an obvious candidate,
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and Stalin’s takeover of the three Baltic states in 1940 is another.
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Yet the fate of Poland in 1944–5 must surely top the list. Poland was a comparatively large country, a combatant Allied state, and a formal ally of the Western Powers. Nonetheless, the formula which could be dubbed the ‘Montenegrin Gambit’ worked like a dream for Poland’s post-war oppressors. In stage one, the Soviet Union’s Red Army overruns Poland in the closing campaign of the war against Germany; one Allied country is said to be liberating another. In stage two, in the shadow of Red Army bayonets, a bogus committee is formed to undermine the reputation of the exiled government in London, and to demand a common political front with the USSR. Their programme is presented as the product of honest differences within Polish democratic opinion. In stage three, a pre-printed manifesto is suddenly produced, and in the name of the people a self-appointed gang of Soviet stooges usurp the prerogatives of the legal but absent government. In stage four, the Communist security forces classify all political opponents as ‘bandits’, and calmly pulverize the independence movement. The Western leaders thereon submit to the ‘friendly ally syndrome’ in the manner of the Foreign Office panels, as ‘Russia clasped Poland in her arms’.
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Surprising parallels can be observed during the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s. The militaristic, centralizing Serbia that swallowed Montenegro in 1918 seems to have been reborn in the militaristic, centralizing Serbia of Slobodan Milošević. Once again, shameless intrigues in neighbours’ affairs, the deployment of military force, and murderous reprisals against ‘rebels’ became the order of the day. Once again, most Western leaders stood aloof in impotent embarrassment. Yugoslavia fell apart amid a worse wave of thuggery and chicanery than that attending her birth.
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Fortunately, after years of bloodshed and hand-wringing, the Western Powers eventually overcame their inhibitions. Peace-keeping forces were sent to Bosnia and to Kosovo and the warring parties were brought to the negotiating table at Dayton, Ohio. The Serb-led Yugoslav army was restrained, Yugoslavia was selectively bombed by NATO, and Milošević eventually faced charges of war crimes before an international tribunal.
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One wonders what King Nikola might have made of it all, had he or his successors had ever returned to pot the ivories in the Biljarda House or to bask on the sun-baked battlements of Bar. Nikola had belonged to a generation for whom ‘Serb’ and ‘Montenegrin’ were almost inter-changeable terms, and for whom the enemy was almost invariably an outsider – usually a Turk or an Austrian. Familiar with tribal feuds, he could hardly have imagined the scale of the fratricidal slaughter that was perpetrated by Yugoslavs against Yugoslavs in 1918–21, in 1941–5 and again in 1991–5. Moreover, Nikola was overthrown not by republicans but by fellow monarchists, and his memory was reinstated by an ex-Communist. So he might have concluded that neither monarchy nor republicanism, which gained an incontestable lead in Yugoslavia during the Second World War, were necessarily virtuous. The only true guide to human behaviour, perhaps, is the ancient Montenegrin code of ‘Humanity and Bravery’. In this spirit, Montenegrins of all persuasions can still enjoy the rousing song, which King Nikola himself composed:

Onamo, ‘namo… za brda ona

Milošev, kažu, prebiva grob!

Onamo pokoj dobiću duši

Kad Srbin više ne bude rob!

There, over there… beyond the hills,

Miloš, they say, is laid in his grave!

There longs my soul for eternal peace